Calm
by periwinkled
Summary: "You call that knocking?  What if I'd been naked?"      Dark flags of color appeared high on his cheekbones, and Alex realized with a flash that he was blushing.  She'd made Navy Seal Sean Pierce blush.  It was a heady thought.


"Stay at Division," she muttered to herself. "It's _safer_ here. Ha!" She could feel her heart rate starting to escalate again, and she struggled to control her breathing. The irony of using Amanda's own technique to calm her anger with Amanda was not lost on her.

The sound of a quick knock followed by the door opening startled her out of her focus. She instinctively jerked upward, knocking her forehead hard against one of the metal slats underneath the regulation Division recruit bed. "Ow," she groaned.

Her visitor took two steps into the room, and then stopped at the sound of her voice. "Alex?"

She was suspended between irritation and embarrassment. "Sean?"

"Why are you under the bed?"

Alex went with irritation. It seemed simpler. She shuffled out from under the bed in what she hoped was not a thoroughly ridiculous manner and pinned him with a glare. "You call that knocking? What if I'd been naked?"

Dark flags of color appeared high on his cheekbones, and Alex realized with a flash that he was blushing. She'd made Navy Seal Sean Pierce blush. It was a heady thought. To her disappointment, his voice was a steady as ever. "You don't have any clothes here. It was unlikely that you'd be indecent."

"Maybe I like laying around in the buff." It was a deliberate challenge. She wanted to see that blush again. He didn't rise to the bait, however.

"You mean while hiding under your bed?"

Alex realized she was still crouched on the ground, and stood. He was still taller than she, especially without her heels on, but it felt better to be on more equal footing. "I wasn't hiding."

"Then what?"

"I left something under the bed when I graduated to agent and I was curious if it was still there."

"Was it?"

She forced herself to shrug. "No."

"What was it?"

She shot him a look. Why did he care? "A CD. It was a gift from a friend."

"From Thom? The agent you killed?"

She whipped her head around to face him fully. "Just because you've read my file doesn't mean you know a goddamn thing about me."

"I didn't say I did." He said nothing else, just considered her with that calm, unnerving gaze. She'd become an expert at ignoring it, but something about today, whether it was her residual anger with Amanda or the oddness of the whole situation, made her want to talk.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Sean leaned back against the closed door. "Since you've read the file, you know how quickly I advanced from recruit to agent. Since the truth came out, everyone has assumed that it was Nikita's training that gave me the edge I needed. They forget that I was Nikolai Usinov's only child."

"He taught you to fight?"

"He taught me to survive."

Comprehension dawned in Sean's eyes.

"A friend gave me a little pink music player. My papa hated it. Called it a distraction."

"You hid it under your bed."

She nodded. "I don't know why I picked there. The house was full of nooks and crannies to hide in." Her smile faded. "The night they died, my papa pulled me into my room. Guns were firing, the house was burning all around us. He told me to hide."

"You went under the bed."

"I don't know why I did."

"It was a safe place."

"I watched him die from under that bed, Sean. I thought I would die, too. It wasn't a safe place anymore."

"Yet you hid the CD Thom gave up under this bed. Why?"

She gave a one-shoulder shrug. "I liked the symmetry of it. I used to go under that bed, wait for the panic to start, and then…" she trailed off.

"You'd wrestle it into submission."

Alex found herself smiling. "That's a good way to put it."

"Was that what you were doing now? Wrestling with the Gogol hit?"

She scoffed. "Hardly. I wanted more than anything to punch Amanda today. Once upon a time, Thom and I were allies." She looked away. "We were friends. I thought if the CD was still here, it would calm me to see it."

"I'm sorry it's not."

"Me too."

Sean finally straightened and stepped away from the wall. He glanced around the bright white room. "It's not bad, for barracks."

"Sure, if you don't mind the overly-sanitized look."

He shot her what might have been a grin. "Beats bunking with a bunch of smelly guys."

"You've got me there."

"I've got to get back to Ops. I'm sorry you're stuck here, even if it will keep you safe."

"Sean, I can keep _myself_ safe."

He nodded, once, but said nothing. He pulled the door closed behind him.

And oddly, Alex finally felt calm.


End file.
